Okay, here it is guys, guess what?.....It’s a checkerboard cake! I mean, you probably already deduced as much but I thought I’d add some extra emphasis for good measure, you know?
Surprisingly the checkered design isn’t as difficult to create as you might be thinking. It’s actually fairly easy but that won’t change the fact that it will be something that’s sure to impress the guests. The day I made the first one of these cakes (I actually made it a few times for testing so let’s just call it “take #1”), no one could figure out how I did it.
Hehe, this was so funny; my sister just stood and stared at the thing for the longest time before turning to me and saying “Okay, I give up. I know you didn’t just sit and cut out tiny cubes of cake to paste together, but really, how did you do it?” The kiddos thought it was pretty awesome too and I’ll admit I had way too much fun myself in making it. I’ll definitely be doing the checkered thing again.
As for the cake itself, I’m talking about the flavor here, well it’s kind of EVERYTHING! If you haven’t jumped on the tahini bandwagon yet then I suggest you hitch a ride right now, starting with this recipe. I usually try to steer clear of majority fads for the most part, but if there was ever a trend worth following then tahini is it! It’s like peanut butter’s cousin that has been seriously under-appreciated all its life. Maybe it only seems that way to me because I’ve been one of the oblivious peanut butter loyalists not appreciating it. As you can tell from how much I’ve already used it recently, I’m planning to make up for a lifetime worth of ignorance and I’m just getting started.
Good news though, for any of you who aren’t so into tahini or maybe just can’t get it, you can replace it with peanut butter. Yeah, that’s what I just said. For all of you reese’s lovers reading this, just imagine the glorious delight of a 4-layered cake that tastes like your favorite chocolate and peanut butter candy. I know, say WHAT!
I had to do multiple tests to get this recipe down so I’ve already tried it both ways. I even tried a combo of peanut butter and tahini, and I’ve gotta admit that it would be a pretty close race if the two options were side by side. I pretty much want to live on a planet made of peanut butter, but then I’ve also got that major thing going on with tahini right now. Don’t you just hate those pesky love triangles?
Anywho, you’ve really got try making a checkered cake. It’s the bomb and so much fun! If you actually are going to try it then let me mention a few tiny tid-bits before you start. Firstly, the best way to get a perfectly fitting and squared design is to use cookie cutters. That’ll give you the least amount of headache, so me being me I obviously skipped this and just eyed the cuts on my first try. The downside to that is was that I ended up having to use extra frosting in between to get it to stay together.
Oh yeah that’s the second thing, unless you’ve got one of those nifty checkered cake pans you’ll be using frosting as a glue of sorts to hold the alternating colors together but this also helps keep the cake extra moist so it’s a win win.
Thirdly, the decorating part is completely up to you. The recipe make enough frosting for you to have plenty of creative space to mess around and do want you want. I tried to keep it simple with the frosting job and then added a tempting rim of chocolate drip because that’s a big thing right now. (Oh man! hand to forehead moment I guess I’m not doing as well at that avoiding-the-fads thing as I thought, am I?)
As always, the recipe is available upon request. The first request gets an upvote.
ALL CONTENT IS MINE AND ORIGINAL! All of these food photos were taken with my Nikon D5300 and my favorite Lens, the Nikon AF-S FX NIKKOR 50mm f/1.8G. You can find out more in my INTRO POST. And by the way, my intro post did a huge $0.21
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Don't forget to check out my other recent food posts:
Peanut Butter M&M Jekyll & Hyde Monster Cookies (FOOD PHOTO SHOOT)
Simple Sweet Potato Chicken Lunchplate Inspiration (FOOD PHOTO SHOOT)
Chocolate Drizzled Black Sesame Popcorn Balls (FOOD PHOTO SHOOT)
Nutella Popcorn Ultimate Chick-Flick Snack Mix (FOOD PHOTO SHOOT)
AND A HUGE MASSIVE SHOUT OUT TO@rigaronib for designing my logo!!!!